Who Is James?

James 1:1 “James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ,​To the twelve tribes in the Dispersion: Greetings.”

Who is James? The author of this book was known in that day as James the Just, or James the Righteous. We would know him as James the half-brother of Jesus Christ. He’s actually the oldest of Jesus’ four half-brothers and I don’t know how many half-sisters.

Matthew 13:55, “Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary?​And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas?”

He was also the leader of the church in Jerusalem. When we hear “leader of the church” we think he was a pastor. His position was a little bit bigger than that. James was way up in the stratosphere of the church leadership because Jerusalem is where Christianity started, and James served as the leader of the church at Jerusalem. In Acts 15, Luke talks about the meeting of the minds, the big convention that happened, the Jerusalem Council. James led that, so he was a big deal.Jesus went back to heaven when he was about 30 years old. We also know Mary, Jesus’ mom was married to Joseph, and that Joseph and Mary had more children after Jesus was born, and James was one of them. You may have heard that he’s not really a half-brother, because you may have been taught that Mary, Jesus’ mother, was a perpetual virgin, that Jesus was it, her only son. We don’t read that in the word, in fact we see in Matthew that Mary and Joseph had at least 4 more sons and lots of daughters, so it was a pretty big family and James was the oldest of the half-brothers.Can you imagine being the younger sibling of Jesus? You think you have a younger sibling complex, “Oh Mom and Dad love him, he never does anything wrong”…okay, that was true!! He never did ANYthing wrong! Imagine having those shoes to fill! James spent the first 30 or so years of his life looking at Jesus not doing anything wrong and was frustrated by that. How do I know? James thought Jesus was crazy.

Mark 3:21 “And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him,​for they were saying, "He is out of his mind."

James’ attitude was, “This guy’s nuts! He’s claiming to be the messiah, are you kidding? I’m out. Me and my brothers distance ourselves from this guy, he’s a wacko.”

John 7:5 “For not even his brothers believed in him.”

James was not a believer.James did not believe what Jesus was saying, what Jesus was doing. Why in the world then did he write this letter to the church? How did he become the leader of the church? It’s really cool.

1 Corinthians 15:7 “Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.”

Jesus appeared to James after he had been crucified, after he died, after all these things, he showed up to James and said, “Do you believe me now? What else do I need to do? It’s right in front of you, right here.” James became a believer, it’s safe to say.

James became the leader of the church in Jerusalem after Peter was arrested. Jesus called Peter “the Rock,” and said on this rock he would build his church, and for a time we saw Peter doing just that. He spent 10 years building the church in Jerusalem and sending people out, then Peter was arrested and left Jerusalem and James took over. This was not a transition pastor – you may have been to a church where the pastor started the church, did fantastic things, was awesome, had to leave for whatever reason, and everyone’s frustrated trying to get used to the “new guy”. This situation was nothing like that, James was already part of the church, and so he stepped into Peter’s spot and continued to build and continued to lead. That’s who James was.

However, in James 1:1 how does he recognize himself? Who does he say he is?

James 1:1 James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ,​To the twelve tribes in the Dispersion: Greetings.

He calls himself “a servant of Jesus.” If you were related to Jesus Christ and you were trying to do get people to listen to what you were trying to say, don’t you think you would have name-dropped just a little? That would have been on your resume! If you were writing this letter, or trying to get a speaking engagement, you would have included, “Oh yeah, and I’m Jesus’ half-brother” – you would totally do that! That’s what we expect! We want to know where you’ve been, what you’ve done, who you’ve worked with – we love that stuff. James wasn’t like that. He learned from Jesus. Jesus said, “I didn’t come to be served, I came to serve” and James follows in that. James doesn’t name-drop, he just says “Hi, I’m James. I’m a servant just like you guys.” James was actually the first book of the New Testament to be written. I know it’s towards the back, but in terms of chronology, it was written within 10 years of Jesus returning to heaven. That makes it the earliest book to be written, and it was written to address the erroneous issues and beliefs and all the errors that Christians can come up with, when they think they’ve got it all figured out. The book of James is called the Proverbs of the New Testament. A proverb is a saying, containing wisdom. James assumes that the readers of this letter already knew Christ, were already believers. That’s why James sometimes frustrates people, because they ask, “How do I follow Jesus? How do I get to that point, because I don’t see it in James” and there was a huge kafuffle over whether James should even be included in the Bible. We’ll get to some of his more controversial topics in the next few weeks, but it was written to people who were already believers. He was essentially saying, “Guys, you already know Jesus, you already follow Jesus, the problem is you’re following him incorrectly”, so James writes this letter to straighten them out. You’ve all seen people who head down a path and you think, “What in the world? Where did that come from?!” That’s what was happening, because the church had been dispersed. When he says, “to the 12 tribes,” it’s not the actual tribes; he’s referring to believers in the dispersion. What happened? Stephen was stoned, and you can read that in Acts 8. Not just pebbles, but actually huge stones thrown to kill him for preaching the name of Christ. When that happened, it scared the daylights out of all the other Christians who just scattered from Jerusalem, so when he says the 12 tribes of the dispersion, that’s who he’s talking to: the Christians who have actually become missionaries because they’re still following Christ and living it out. James is getting word back that they’re jacking this up and thinks, “I gotta help them out,” so he’s writing this letter to say, “Guys get it together, come together now.” Last thing about the book of James before we really start digging in is that it is highly action driven. This is not a theoretical book that you are meant to sit around and ponder. James has 108 verses, and 50 of them - almost half! - contain some sort of action verb. “Go,” “Do,” “Stop”. This is not a “let’s sit around and talk about this” but a “shut up, stop talking about it, and do it” kind of book.